


Sono Qui

by curious_eye



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, That van scene that we will talk about forever
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:00:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25292839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curious_eye/pseuds/curious_eye
Summary: They have as close to an eternity as they can get to spend together but the sight of Nicky, unmoving but achingly close, frustrates Joe more than he can explain.The scene in the van and its aftermath - Joe is in love and so is Nicky but Nicky is also tired.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 39
Kudos: 1176
Collections: The Old Guard





	Sono Qui

**Author's Note:**

> I know there’s probably already a hundred different versions of this but I wanted to add my own XD
> 
> If anyone needs me I’ll be hiding under a rock and wondering how any relationship in the world will ever match Joe and Nicky.
> 
> (Also I have only been able to watch the film once (although I have watched this scene many more times :p ) and am not familiar with the comics so if there are inconsistencies, I apologise!)

It was ironic how the downsides to immortality could be twisted to suit any situation. If he wanted a moment to pass he’d try to remind himself of the fleeting imprint that short period of time would have over the course of his life, only to find the seconds somehow drawing out to fill the space that entire decades sometimes occupied in his memory. If he wanted to savour a moment, let it linger and expand to fill every crevice of his senses, he’d find the memory fading from his head all too quickly, replaced by countless others that he didn’t care for.

Nicky wasn’t waking up. They’d both inhaled the same gas, both been dragged to the same moving prison but he’d woken up too many minutes ago and Nicky hadn’t.

The soldiers were watching; trained, narrowed eyes exploring his own intense focus, trailing it to land on the prone figure who lay still. Too still. Joe flexed his fingers as the tight tie around his wrists made the extremities grow steadily more numb, feeling his body follow suit as Nicky made no move.

Joe stretched an arm out, brushing his hand against the other man’s shoulder, first faintly and then with more insistence. They may have had a considerable allowance of time stretching ahead of them but the prospect of wasting merely a second when they were so close they could touch was unbearable.

“Nicolo?”

His rasping question earned him a sharp knock on the head with the barrel of a weapon that struck almost no fear into his heart. Not fear like the sight of Nicky, still unmoving. Logically, the other man would wake. Logically this was not like the countless other times one or both of them had lay still, temporarily dead. _Logically,_ Nicky hadn’t even been killed so the fear that it had somehow reached his time to let go was entirely irrational.

“Quiet!”

“Nicolo, destati!” Joe ignored the sharp warning, his gaze not even drifting the few inches right that he would need to drag it in order to acknowledge the soldier who had spoke. “Destati!”

“I said-”

I know what you said.” He saw a twitch in Nicky’s hand, a flurry of minute movements across his face. Satisfied momentarily, he tore his eyes away, fixing the soldier with a tired stare. “What are you going to do? Kill me?”

There was no answer to that, even as the man flexed his finger against the trigger of his gun thoughtfully. Joe fought the urge to roll his eyes as he looked away, a gesture that Nicky would always say he’d played a part in bringing to prevalence. He sighed instead, the thought of the other man’s teasing tone clawing at his insides with a more permanent ache than physical weapons could achieve. Nicky continued to shift very slightly, his body surely rejecting the effects of the gas by now and if not that, aching from his awkward position on the floor.

“Nicolo, destati!” The soldiers were silent now, no doubt sharing looks over his head as he focused solely on Nicky. “Destati!" Nicky squirmed against the restraints around his wrist, eyes still closed but mouth parting to speak.

"Sono qui,” he murmured faintly, a smile as weak as his voice gracing his face for a brief moment. Joe knew that he had seen the expression a thousand times or more, so frequently aimed at him in a moment of frustration, softly asking for his patience. “Sono qui.”

He began to move more, setting the guards around them on edge, although Joe was happy to discard that thought in favour of others. Like the memories of waking up with Nicky in every different century they’d seen out together; how the other man always looked as he did now, more commonly lit by the morning light. Like the less comforting thought that he continued to fumble sluggishly, too sluggishly, searching for purchase on the metal floor. At least his eyes had opened, meeting Joe’s first with a reliable constancy and then expanding his view further, frowning.

“Ovunque qui sia,” he added, his uncertainty still fuelled by the fatigue that made his words blend together, spill into each other. Joe glanced around their ‘here’ and searched for a moment to find the word in Italian. It was entirely unnecessary but the comfort that their conversation would exist only between the two of them was reassuring.

“In un blindato,” he replied, eyes on Nicky always, brow furrowed as he watched the unusual effort it took for the other man to push himself upright. “Hanno usato del gas."

“I told you, shut up.” The harsh warning fell largely on deaf ears, the words serving only to remind Joe that they weren’t alone in the van. His eyes flickered briefly over to the man who spoke once more, angry to be interrupted.

“I need to know he’s okay,” he bit back, just catching Nicky’s brief smile as his mouth flickered up and down between one second and the next. His eyes were half-closed but trained on Joe, head tilted. If Joe was beside him, which he would have been under any other circumstances, his shoulder would fit neatly beneath Nicky’s head, an apt pillow for the other man to rest against. The pain of living over and over faded with time but there was a tiredness that only seemed to grow with each passing century. Whilst they would never tire of each other, Joe sensed that this was one of those moments that Nicky wanted to tolerate momentarily and then cast off from his memory, letting it blend into obscurity with the more mundane days that they’d lived through.

“What is he? Your boyfriend?”

As the van filled with leering laughter, Joe focused on Nicky in an attempt to lessen the effect of the grating sound on his already fraying temper. Nicky, who sighed, looking away from Joe to cast an almost sympathetic expression in the direction of the ringleader. They’d been in the same position before, enough times to know what was coming as Joe inhaled deeply.

The words spilled from him as naturally as the air that he pushed from his lungs but with the force of a raging river bursting its dam. Something else that he could do almost endlessly, besides living, was speak of Nicky, of the infinite ways the man across from him shaped his very being, shielded him from that which he despised and reminded him of all he loved.

Nicky watched on for the duration, the corner of his mouth twitching with an old patience, eyes open wider and focused wholly on Joe, letting him know that he could talk for hours and hours without losing his attention. 

“You’re an incurable romantic,” he said eventually, the simple reply holding so much more than the sentence contained within it, an answer to Joe’s welling eyes.

Like in battle, they moved as one, surging away from the reaching hands of their respective captors, towards one another as if the world once again had narrowed to contain just the two of them. Joe would stretch that brief respite to fill millennia; the scent of Nicky overwhelming him, his mouth pressed against his own and continuing to exchange a thousand words without either ever speaking.

The soldiers’ response was jarring, an insistent force tearing them apart once more. Nicky’s back slammed against the bench behind him, bound hands bouncing in his lap. Joe ignored the already fading ache in his own spine, glowering at any of the soldiers whose eyes he could meet and then instantly extinguishing the fire in his stare when he turned it on Nicky. Nicky, who looked tired all over again but didn’t need to nod in answer to Joe’s plan, understanding it in its entirety.

* * *

“Vieni qui,” Joe murmured some time later, pushing himself up from the floor to sit on one of the now unoccupied benches. He longed for a closeness to Nicky that had been unobtainable before, the pile of bodies up against the door finally giving them some privacy. Nicky was knelt on the floor, eyes screwed closed and using one hand to brace himself against the opposite bench. Joe raised his voice slightly. “Nicolo? Vieni qui.”

When Nicky moved it was with a lethargy that he’d carried with him even as they’d turned a well-practiced rage on the people who had tried to pull them apart. Even chained to the floor of the van and with limited use of their hands they could have beaten the soldiers a hundred times over.

“Sono qui,” he repeated again, his feet curled beneath him on the floor as he moved over and tilted his head to rest against Joe’s leg. He was quiet again after that, letting nothing but a huffed breath escape his mouth. Joe was restless, especially after that burst of action. He almost wished there had been more of a fight, anything to expend the sudden surge of energy he felt that Nicky was certainly lacking.

“Nicolo,” he whispered instead, speaking for no reason other than to feel the shape of the other man’s name on his lips. He brushed a hand over his hair; he much preferred the softness that tickled his palm having lived through centuries where poor hygiene had been the norm. Nicky tilted his head closer, humming under his breath and then sighing. It was his silent way of telling Joe he had noticed his restlessness. Noticed it but had no remedy. Usually Joe would stop, given the acknowledgment, but he was consumed by the need to get more from the other man, to reassure the age old paranoia in his head that they were both in one, whole piece.

“Yusuf,” Nicky eventually said, drawing the smile that landed on Joe’s face with his choice of address. Whilst Joe would never tire of sounding each and every syllable of Nicolo, both of them liked the simplicity of Joe and it had stuck far more. “Sono qui.”

“I know, I know.” Joe ducked his head as Nicky tilted his own upwards, brushing their foreheads together intuitively. He mustered a smile for the other man whose eyes were back to being half-lidded and sleepy even as they shone endlessly at the sight of Joe. “The gas – it hurt you?”

“No, just a headache but that has gone now,” Nicky replied, “But everything still feels… cloudy?” Joe chuckled a little at his fumbled wording, relaxing when Nicky seemed pleased by his reaction. He searched within himself for a sign of the gas lingering, wondering if his own adrenaline had numbed its effects more than it had for Nicky. Sometimes it was worse, having pain fade so quickly. To lose the pounding headache but still feel the weighty pull of unconsciousness.

“It will fade,” Joe said with a certainty he didn’t possess. Nicky would see through his reassurances and humour him, he was sure. Nicky would always humour his need to hover, to watch even the smallest cuts heal without a blemish. As Joe would do the same for him.

“It is,” Nicky agreed, slumping against the bench and Joe’s leg once more. “Slowly.” He leant his head back against Joe’s waiting hand, receiving his stroking fingers like a cat lying contentedly in the sun.

“These people we choose to spend our time with are terrible influences, Nicolo,” Joe filled the silence after some time, greeted by Nicky’s radiant smile, glowing even when his eyes were not open to emit the bright light within them. “We get back together and it takes, how long, for us to get caught?”

“We deserve a holiday,” Nicky grinned, turning with a reassuring alertness and propping his head up on his hand, resting his elbow against the bench.

“Another one?” Joe asked, raising an eyebrow and trying to look incredulous, simultaneously losing himself in a fantasy of returning to one of the many places they had passed through too swiftly, always agreeing to return at a slower pace one day.

“We’ve earned it,” Nicky replied.

“You’re a terrible influence,” Joe said with a disapproving shake of his head, smiling already at Nicky’s disagreeing expression, watching him gesture in the direction of the doors and the pile of bodies.

“That was your idea,” he argued lightly, sinking his head back against Joe’s leg, never drawing away for long before reconnecting them together. “I’m not the bad influence here.”

**Author's Note:**

> All of the Italian that was in the scene is taken from a YouTube comment that wrote out what they said to each other so I’m relying on it being accurate XD
> 
> Destati - Wake up  
> Sono qui - I'm here  
> Ovunque qui sia - Wherever here is  
> In un blindato. Hanno ustado del gas - In an armoured van. They used gas  
> Vieni qui - Come here


End file.
